Thread: De la Rosa: the McLaren Simulator is much better than Ferrari

De la Rosa: the McLaren Simulator is much better than Ferrari

Pedro de La Rosa, who for many years McLaren, went today for the first time on the track behind the wheel of a Ferrari. Communicating with the press at the end of the day, the Spaniard has compared the McLaren simulator with the simulator Scuderia. . .

Pedro de La Rosa: "we're not where We want to be, but I like to work with engineers, who determined to take a step forward in our programme of work on the simulator. You need to be realistic. McLaren started to work on the simulator in 2003 year, so ahead of the rest of the team for several years.

The whole point of my joining Ferrari - the acceleration of this process. We don't know how much time will it take six months, a year, two years. In Ferrari realize that they must exhibit maximum attention, because in the absence of the actual tests, the teams that have no modern simulator, much inferior to rivals. We need to improve both software and hardware. But, first of all, we need to update the equipment, which does not allow to use the most modern software."

Friday in Jerez started to Pedro de La Rosa failed: the Spaniard drove one installation lap on the second from the rear of the machine appeared a thick cloud of smoke, and the area of the right exhaust pipe burst into flame.



Pedro de La Rosa: "When I stopped the car on the warm up lap because of problems with the gearbox, can't say I was happy about that. The opportunity to sit behind the wheel of a Ferrari, you can wait your whole life, but after a few turns I stopped on the road and didn't know if I could continue working, because some items were damaged in the fire.

I experienced mixed emotions: first was excited, then I felt upset. However, the mechanics did a great job restoring the car, and in the afternoon I was back on track. For me it is important, in the absence of tests even one day is very expensive, so it is important to use it to the maximum.

Today I was able to feel the F138 and was able to assess the level of clamping force of a modern Formula 1 car compared to the one I flew last year. We have gathered the necessary information, which we will use in the next few weeks on the simulator. Although I was not able to work on long distances and to drive many laps we did a very important job."